Twin City church of Christ Blog
“Jan 17, 2024 - Freedom”
Categories: 2024 Reading DevotionalsFreedom
Reading: Galatians 4:21-31
Paul’s strategy in this section is daring: he argues that Christians are children of Sarah while Jews who continue to keep Moses’ Law are not. He does this by allegorizing (Gal 4:24) the Old Testament story of Hagar and Sarah, who both bore children to Abraham. “But the son of the slave was born according to the flesh, while the son of the free woman was born through promise”(Gal 4:23). Hagar represents both slavery and “the flesh”(because by her Abraham attempted to “help God out” by his own wisdom), while Sarah represents both freedom and “promise”(because God promised that she would bear Abraham’s son). “One is from Mount Sinai, bearing children for slavery; she is Hagar. Now Hagar is Mount Sinai in Arabia; she corresponds to the present Jerusalem, for she is in slavery with her children”(Gal 4:24-25). Those who continue to keep the Law of Moses are slaves (see Gal 3:23, 4:1, 8-9), which means they have more in common with Hagar than Sarah.
But followers of Jesus are not so. We are citizens of “the Jerusalem above”(Gal 4:26). In the same way that barren Sarah rejoiced when God blessed her, so we rejoice that God has fulfilled his promises to us (Gal 4:27). “But just as at that time he who was born according to the flesh persecuted him who was born according to the Spirit, so also it is now”(Gal 4:29). Ishmael (Hagar’s son) scorned Isaac (Sarah’s son) (see Gen 21:9), just as religious Jews persecuted believers in Jesus. But Paul assures us that this is not the last word on persecution; just as Ishamel was cast out, so Jesus’ people stand to inherit while unbelievers will not (Gen 4:30).
The thrust of Paul’s argument is that disciples of Jesus are free from slavery to the law. We are not bound to a standard of complete perfection we can never meet, to sins we cannot rid ourselves of, and to a curse we cannot remove. We are free. He is also teaching the Galatians that any system that brings us back into slavery is not from Jesus (see Gal 5:1, 13). God wants us to be free, but we must remain in (and guard) that freedom.
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One Thing to Think About: What do spiritual slavery and freedom look like?
One Thing to Pray For: Confidence that whatever persecution I endure is not the final word
